Xmas in the sun

Quite a nice sight for Xmas morning I am sure you will agree..... I even  managed to cook the dinner, complete with sprouts and stuffing, minus the pigs in blankets and Yorkshire puddings but hey, you can't have everything!

We're still both a bit stumped by the time zone issue, more of a time shift that captain James T Kirk would have trouble getting used to ( James T Kirk. ...James T Cook ....see where they got it from?)
It still seems wrong spending most of the darkness hours in the morning awake especially as it's boring, but at least I know what the new patented back stretcher does from the infomercial!

Xmas jumper Hawaiian style

No robins but I managed to spot these little fellas

After a bit of a drive round, we didn't get too far with me suffering the sore throat and aching muscles but we managed to see a nice bay and a nice sunset

Feet in the ocean

  We headed out to get ingredients  for Christmas dinner tomorrow,  Carrots, check, sprouts, check, gravy, check, stuffing. ..... sort of. Pigs in blankets..... no chance, we even tried asking but no luck. Yorkshire puddings, haha no way was I going to buy a 3lb bag of flour and 24 eggs jthe to make 2 people's worth of yorkshires.
  Having booked late by " Xmas in hawaii" standards the choice of accommodation was a bit limited, plenty over the other side of the island near to the erupting volcano,  bargain prices too but a week of breathing in sulphur isn't the best for your health. The only choices left were expensive,  but what the heck, it was for Christmas after all. We ended up in a unit at a resort, by unit they mean something the size of a house , kitchen and living room the same size as ours at home,  2 bathrooms, massive bedroom, I could have brought the chickens on holiday after all!! They would have enjoyed the patio and garden,  and the break in the sunshine.

  So we headed off up the  coast in search of scenery and beaches.

 The ancient Hawaiians had it all worked out. A village by the sea, a sheltered cove, fish inot the sea, cotton plants growing wild, nice weather, it makes you wonder what the kings and Queens of Hawaii would have thought when  they decided to become  part of the USA in 1959 . Judging by the number of eateries,  I reckon they would have been better keeping Captain Cook's original name of the Sandwich Isles.

BIG  island is the place where the Hawaiians met their first westerners when Captain Cook landed there in 1778, having traveled the globe, discovering and claiming places like, Canada, New Zealand,  Tahiti,  Thailand and generally being a nuisance,  spreading western diseases he finally got his come uppance and was killed in Hawaii following some sort of quarrel in 1779.  He has been conveniently side lined in Hawaii. ... apart from something he left behind. ..... can you guess what it is yet....?

The ancient Hawaiians were  well off for fish, as Europeans we are not used to year round warm water, let alone the life that teems in the ocean, a couple of feet off the shore. Even at paddling distance from the beach there are tropical fish feeding off the life on the rocks, Als phone is allegedly waterproof but we decided not to risk it by Tring to take photos in the water. The Rock pools make interesting exploring too, spiky things, baby molluscs, tiny fish, all sheltering from some of the waves in their little nurseries.

Yes, for the first time in years, Al removed his socks and shoes, rolled up his trouser legs and paddled in the water. We haven't been big beach people over the years, it is too cold at home and the East coast of the USA is too rough to paddle, Hawaii has rough seas too, massive tsunami like waves, but here and there you can find sheltered coves, usually denoted by a load of cars parked illegally beside the road.
 I found a couple of shells in one pool to take back home, but it was not until we go back to the car that I realised I was making someone homeless. .. tiny hermit crabs, I was busy looking at one , meanwhile the other one had walked off down my leg looking for its dinner. Not wanting to evict the little crabs,  we put them down to find their way home.

 The sea is so rough here on occasion that it washes coral from the reefs out at sea onto the beach, masses of it, certainly enough to take a piece as a Christmas present for the cacti in the conservatory.

I thought it was a cold I caught from someone on the plane.... perhaps I have something else??


Funny how the lava makes ridges as it gets squished on its way to the sea

The silliest airport in the world

  As I pointed out to Al when we sat down on the flight to Kona, it's never a good sign when the air conditioning on the plane smells of puke...... not that either of us have any problem with travel sickness.
  As a child we travelled a lot by ferry,  sometimes crossings of the 8 plus hours variety,  all weathers Steve and I went to France with the twinning association in November with the associated rough ferry crossings with no ill effects.  I think it was the grounding in long trips that set  me up for life to handle long distance travel.  Even Steve who isn't mad about flying manages flights to California without issue.


I wasn't always a mad flyer,  one of the events of 2003 apart from deciding to train as a teacher was that I cured myself of my 20 year self imposed grounding from my fear of flying.

You read that right, me, scared of flying.

Picking Dennis or Janet up from an airport gave me the willies, I got off a display plane at Duxford because it made me scared to walk down the aisle. Try as I might I couldnt see how anyone could actually travel on a plane without screaming.  Al had his 4th birthday treat flight to Scotland without me. Duncan went to the USA for work on his own ..... nothing would have got me on a plane..I had to be tranquilized to fly to Spain in 1986 and stayed well clear from that moment on.

It was like this...... I was watching a TV programme an out Annie Proulx and how she wrote "That old ace in the hole " (which I still haven't read) and the country around her looked so vast and so wild, desolate,  amazing  that I just knew at that moment that I would be able to get over my fear of flying and  visit amazing places like that.
   So the 24th of February 2003 saw me and Dunc on a Ryanair flight to Brussels,  I was a bit wobbly on the way back but by May 2003  the three of us were on a flight to Philadelphia to  visit Max who had moved there .

And the rest, as they say is history.
I didn't fly over the Atlantic by myself for another couple of years , once I had a "how am I going to get home" in Philly,  cured by a bottle of Heineken,  but the die had been cast,  the bug had been caught and there was no stopping me, no stopping us....I am proud that Al got to visit so many fabulous places while he was young,  even more so now because he has so many memories of Dunc that he can look back on.

    Where was I ?.... The flight.... The flight to Hawaii is one of the longest overwater sectors there is,  over the Pacific,  I have plenty of experience of rough flights over the Atlantic,  turbulence and the associated roller coaster ride was never part of my fear of flying, I love coming into Philly at stormy time of year, seeing the skies light up with flashes of lightning,  feeling the plane buck in the invisible bumps in the air, I don't scare easily.  The Pacific is known for its share of turbulent weather but to me, it doesn't seem that big a deal. 4 1/2  hours of watching I player and eating and drinking was uneventful, a couple of brief seat belt on interludes.  The Pilot announced that there was rough weather ahead and had the cabin prepared for landing early so the cabin crew could sit down and buckle in as well. Moderate chop was the predicted level of bounce,  now I have been in enough turbulence to know that people often over exaggerate the severity of their experiences,  only once have I been in moderate chop and this certainly wasn't moderate chop at all. It did give me a chance to test my theory that I always yawn in turbulence,  sur enough I started to yawn . It is actually a form of travel sickness,  I don't feel ill in the slightest,  my stomach stays resolutely calm, I just yawn. How strange is that.

     I don't think Al could quite believe his eyes, the ramp down from the plane to the tarmac, the collection of gazebos that is the airport waiting lounge, the airport in Maui is rustic but this is more like the cafe area at Colchester zoo..

Standard Ford Focus collected,  we headed to get some drinks and snacks,  then on to a coffee plantation to see and taste.

We stopped by the beach to look at the waves, Al still trying to take it all in.

The day of a thousand dinners

How do you lose a gate checked bag between Dublin and Heathrow??
well, they managed it
Despite our protests that the bag case had come over in the cabin, the staff at Dublin werent having any of it and insisted that it went into the hold for the trip back.... I spoke to the cheerful guy who was loading it , who promised me I could have it again in Heathrow, yet I was still standing there on the baggage reclaim belt when the sign changed from "baggage arriving" to "baggage delivered" . Finally, having been so "assertive" that they brought out a bloke in a suit to speak to me, the bag arrived and I was back on schedule.

Al on the other hand had gone through flight connections and was busy in one of the lounges ..eating again, he had dubbed the trip " the day of a thousand dinners" and set to photographing each on as a record of his gluttony"

So, you have had my trips in Airport photos, scenery and maps, here is the trip in dinners as photographed by Al.

Full English breakfast in the lounge at Heathrow

Breakfast on the flight from Dublin to Heathrow

Lunch in the club lounge at Heathrow

Lunch in the first lounge at Heathrow (this was mine, he ate half )

Dessert

Starter on the flight to Boston

Chicken Tikka on the flight to Boston

Chocolate caramel torte on the flight to Boston 

A second chocolate caramel torte on the flight to Boston

Afternoon tea before landing in Boston

Starter on the flight to LA

Beef main course on the flight to LA

Ice cream sundae on flight to LA

There you have it, not quite a thousand but more meals than a person is capable of eating in a days travelling!!!

count your chickens......

.......or is it dont count your chickens?
 Tom from down the road banged on the door and said there was a bantam loose during the day, a friendly bantam , someone picked it up, was it mine?
I toddled off to count the birds an they were all present and correct, now the only ones that are easy to pick up are the freakies, Gaga is the only one that could be called Grey colour ..... actually come to think of it I saw her on the top of the fence the other morning , I think she is "visiting" during the day. Then next door neighbour walked past and said that Felipe is out every day, no prizes there, he is looking for girl bantams to befriend - as a miniature bantam cockerel, his choices are going to be limited so unless he has taken up courting a pigeon he will be back every night!

So with the hysteria rising at work, the secret santa presents all being brought in, the kiddies instructed to bring in food, goodness knows what they will be like tomorrow- luckily I have been drilling them in what goes on the last day of term for the last month it should all go smoothly ,
All was going smoothly, the room cleaned, the cookers scrubbed, the equipment sorted, a couple of TAs preparing food and clearing up after themselves when.... The Italian club pasta carbonara this lunchtime turned out to be 12 cooking with a teacher who hadnt even been in the room before, I had to leave eventually because I couldnt bear to watch my newly immaculate room in chaos, luckily I had year 11 the next lesson and its the sort of class that I like immensely, I was able to confess to being in a bit of a stress about it and they just cracked on , bless them.

Just Friday's festivities to go then, I have mixed feelings about the Christmas assembly, last year I was just so pleased to be there with everything normal and happy, the kiddies singing and generally going that controlled sort of wild that you do in a school assembly. Dunc had recovered slightly from his operation and I was looking forward to a few days visiting Lisa with Steve and Carl looking after Duncan for me. I had no inkling of what lay ahead of me at work or at home, it was a time of hope, that Duncan might be able to go on for a while longer and that I would be able to continue at work for a bit . As I found out in January, it wasnt to be............


Havent we been here before??

Actually it doesnt look too bad once we get there .........

I have more or less given up worrying about disruptions, it seems to be par for the course with complicated routes, even Al has been caught up with it on the  trip to Nova Scotia so he will be fairly laid back too.

well, back to the wrapping !